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Not drinking enough

Today was a busy day, as it was my wifes birthday, and we had visits from both sets of parents who wanted to both celebrate her birthday, and see me. In addition, it was a surprisingly warm spring day, with lovely bright sunshine. So we all sat out in the back garden and enjoyed the weather. Which was great. Except that in all the excitement, I forgot to drink as much water as I should have, and got a first-hand lesson in dehydration.

Because of all the excitement, I got tired, so slept for an hour before lunch, and then again for a couple of hours later in the afternoon. And of course, you can’t drink while sleeping. So when I woke up from my second nap I was feeling a bit rough; at first I put it down to too much sleep, but then I started to feel physically sick, and realisation dawned. A quick check showed that I’d drunk less than half what I’d normally have drunk by then, and was well adrift of my schedule. So since then, I’ve been concentrating on catching up with my fluids, and sure enough the feelings of sickness, exhaustion etc have steadily worn off.

So, the lesson of the day is not to forget about my fluids, no matter what is going on around me.

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2 thoughts on “Not drinking enough”

First time I’ve checked your blog in days, Richard. Kris and I are glad to see you’ve made it out of hospital and everything seems to be going well so far. I can’t believe they left the staples in for too long – don’t they check these things?! probably too much to do with too few people, I suppose. Is this being done under the NHS or privately?
Cheers, Lucas.
PS Kris had to laugh about you not understanding about recuperation until you got home (she used to be a nurse and says she doesn’t think she’s met anybody who’s understood the impact an operation has on their body). So you’re not alone. She also says Hi to Lyn.

To be fair to them, there is no exact time for taking the staples out, but you’d normally be expected to be home long before they needed attention. It’s usually something that would be done by your local GP. In my case, they were more concerned with some of my other symptoms that were keeping me in hospital, and it just got overlooked until I mentioned it.

The early radiotherapy treatment was done privately, but the actual operation was done under the NHS; the size and complexity was such that I was strongly advised not to go for that privately. I’ll be swapping back to private health for any chemotherapy as there are some potential medical benefits in doing so, and when I eventually get my ileostomy reversed I’ll probably do that privately too, as it’s likely that there will be a shorter wait going privately than on the NHS.